Marshall Ball Has Solved Social Media

Ok, so maybe that’s an overstatement. But he was honored to be part of a panel hosted by Mashable’s Lauren Drell to discuss the state of the medium alongside David Rolfe of BBDO.

Topics included the role of brands in the social media space, industry trends, and the future of premium branded content.

You might not expect to find a whole lot of perspective on such things by asking a 12 year old, but Marshall and David stressed the importance of considering what the space means to the next generation.

“Social media isn’t ‘social media’ to them. There’s no distinction in their eyes. It’s just ‘media,’ it’s the Internet. And the Internet is everything.”

Most important, the guys said, is that the use of this space is true to the medium and has contextual relevance. Brands can’t hope to use social platforms in the same way they’d use a broadcast medium, and that’s exciting and great and awesome.

And for the W+K fans out there, Marshall even managed to squeeze in some allusions to Chalkbot, Human Twitter, and Fanwiches, some of the campaigns our digital department has nailed over the past few years. Learn about those and more over at wk.com.